Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, management information systems (MIS) and business information systems (BIS) are used to gather, store and analyze information. The information is often associated with time and thus called time related information. The time is associated with the time the transaction was entered into the system (called Transaction Time or Journal Time) or the time period in which this information is valid (Valid Time or Business Time). For example, the system may have information that the user Frodo Baggins submitted a transaction on Jan. 2, 2006 with the transaction specifying that from Feb. 1, 2006 to Mar. 5, 2006, his main phone number will be +123456 since he will be on a trip. As such, Jan. 2, 2006 is the transaction time while the period from Feb. 1, 2006 to Mar. 5, 2006 is the valid time.
Data that is associated with time is often call ‘time related’ or ‘temporal’. More specifically, data that is associated with two timelines is called ‘bitemporal’ (a special case of ‘temporal’). In the above example, the data is time related because it is associated with time. More specifically, the data is bitemporal because it is associated with two timelines. The Transaction time is the time the transaction was recorded by the system and the Valid time is the time in which the data will be valid.
Referring again to the example of the bitemporal information above, a user can issue time related queries that can be simple such as ‘what will be the main phone number of user Frodo Baggins on Feb. 1, 2006’ or complex such as ‘as of Dec. 15, 2004, what was the phone number of user Frodo Baggins on Mar. 1, 2006’. It is clear that dealing with bitemporal data is often a source of confusion for many users and a better way to present and manage the data is required.
When an information system associates time with data, this is typically done on a group of values (or ‘fields’). For example, if an information system contains the first, middle and last name of a person, the related time is associated with the three values as a single group rather than having related time for each of the three values. In this disclosure, we refer to a set of data values that are associated with a single time information as a Data Group. For example, in an ERP system, person name information (first name, middle name, and last name) may be one data group while the person home address (street, city, zip, country) can be a second data group, and each is associated separately with transaction and valid time information.
The time related data can be used for managing resources or for analyzing the past or forecasting the future. The data is often stored in different systems. For example, a human resources (HR) system can contain data that was valid in the past, is currently valid, or is expected to become valid regarding a person's location, work times, and pay. A project management (PM) system can contain information regarding project tasking, and progress. Businesses often have many different ERP, MIS, and BIS systems with each system used to manage a portion of the business. For simplicity, all of these systems shall be collectively referred to as ERP systems.
Systems and methods for creating, storing, editing, deleting and otherwise accessing time related information in an ERP system are commonly used in the course of doing business. Users can use the methods to browse and analyze the data in the ERP system. A user can analyze the data in two separate data groups by concurrently using the systems and methods associated with each of the two separate systems. For example, a person can place a display presenting data from the first data group (e.g. Person Title) adjacent to a display presenting data from the second data group (e.g. Person Salary).
Systems and methods that ease the concurrent browsing and access of separate data groups and ERP systems are needed so that users can more efficiently discover trends and correlations in the data.